Living a fast-paced, immediate gratification lifestyle that encourages poor eating habits and less time for exercise have put Americans at risk for a number of health-related diseases. And it isn’t just affecting adults – the population of obese children in our nation has also risen. Since many habits are formed during childhood years, it is a parent’s job to teach their child how to make healthy choices, rather than settle for battling the bulge all the way through adulthood. Helping your family participate in a healthy lifestyle now can prevent health problems - or even death – from affecting them in the near future.
When did America – the land of the free – change it’s mantra to “Supersize me?” It seems that somewhere between burning bras and the rise and fall of dot.coms, we lost our healthy lifestyles for a fast-paced, immediate gratification society, -and our dress size speaks volumes as we do a drive through drive by before dinner is late.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 30 percent of the Americans ages 20 years and older are obese. That means over 60 million people right here in the United States carry a body mass index of 30 or higher; when the healthy BMI range is 18.5- 24.9.
And obesity isn’t just plaguing adults – since 1980, the occurrence of obesity in children (ages 6-19) has tripled. Today, about 16 percent of all youths are overweight. This means that children who fall at or above the 95th percentile on standard BMI for age charts (each chart is age and gender specific) are overweight – when they should be falling on or above the 5th percentile but no more than the 85th percentile.
Even though the Centers for Disease Control have officially made lowering the prevalence of obesity as a national health objective – specifically, their plans are to lower obesity levels by half, or to 15 percent by 2010– the trends aren’t looking so hot. Americans and their children are still getting bigger and bigger, while our chance for health-related illness and even death is higher than ever before.